Essay: Of avian romance in the Capital
It is still springtime in northern India. The harsh summer is a couple of weeks away. The birds of Delhi, now in the mood for love, chirp, whistle, dance and sing for hours at sunrise. Their enthusiasm might disturb humans at daybreak but those who do manage to...
Jyoti Patel, The Things That We Lost: ‘This novel was a reflection of real life’
The Things That We Lost explores the trauma of a British-Gujarati family with hyphenated identities. Did you set out to write a story of belonging, love and loss? PREMIUM Author Jyoti Patel (Mark Strauss) One of the main themes I wanted to explore in the novel...
Down and out in paradise
The book examines the persistence of want in the wealthy United States, finding that keeping some citizens poor serves the interests of many Source link
Book Box: Fighting the Patriarchs with a Bookstore Crawl in NYC
Dear Reader, PREMIUM Mcknally Jackson Seaport, NYC. It’s the weekend and we decide to do a bookstore crawl. We are in New York City and it’s freezing. In Bryant Park and Union Square, the trees are bare and bedraggled and the pavements are slick with small...
Essay: On watching The Lying Life of Adults
A few years out of my melodramatic teenage years, I savoured Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend and all that it presented: two friends looking inwards, in each other’s company; women being indifferent to patriarchy, and a mother accepting a child’s hostile...
HT Picks; New Reads – Hindustan Times
Sedition and free speech in modern India This week’s pick of interesting reads includes a volume that stresses the need for free speech, a book that examines the President’s role when authoritarian governments are voted into power, and a coming-of-age novel....
Interview: Ben Schott, author, Jeeves and the Leap of Faith – “There is a clarity in the way Wodehouse uses words”
When and how did you fall in love with the work of PG Wodehouse? Author Ben Schott (Courtesy the Kolkata Literary Meet) When I was a child, my father used to read to me. I remember him reading serious books like Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) and...
Review: Friends with Benefits; The India-US Story by Seema Sirohi
It is a universally accepted rule that friendship is between equals. So, Seema Sirohi’s book Friends with Benefits: The India-US Story got me wondering when these two nations (poles apart in national power, political determination to enforce deterrence, world...
Review: Maulana Azad; A Life
Historian S Irfan Habib had always admired Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1888–1958), both as a scholar of Islam and as a committed nationalist. But his understanding of Azad’s greatness deepened after he joined as the Maulana Azad Chair at the National University of...
Report: The India Pen Show 2023
An estimated 3,000 buyers of premium writing instruments visited the India Pen Show 2023 held from 17-19 February at the Nehru Centre, Mumbai. With over 40 stalls of pen exhibitors, 20 calligraphy stalls, three stalls for accessories (pen cases etc) and five...